Maze of Words
by Thorne Scratch
Summary: Cloud wakes up. Yaoi.
1. Default Chapter

Title: Maze of Words

Summary: Cloud wakes up. Yaoi. Slight non-con.

Warning & Disclaimer: Angst. Allusion to nonconsensual sexual activity. Profanity. All characters belong to Squaresoft.

Notes: Catt and Twig helped scrub this up, all remaining errors are mine. And much thanks to both of you.

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I can hear the echo  


In a maze of words  


A lonely voice behind a door  


Can you hear me calling  


From a world away  


A lonely voice behind a door

~october project, a lonely voice

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(Listing the present, or what passes for it, in order to get used to it. This is a sky heavy with dust, this is a dull red shiver of light that manages to bleed through. Not everything heals the same way. This is the sky and these are the fragments of buildings that remain standing against the sky. These are the buildings and these are the scraps that show how humanity once thought they overcame nature. These are real things, things to accept.)

(This is a dream.)

(This is waking up alone to the light that is not red only because of the dawn. This is two feet on the floor and this is the musty smell of a foraged blanket. This is water, cold and rusty from the tap, spilling wet all over hands and face.)

(This is being alive. This is not being alive. This is a dream.)

I had a dream about you last night.

(This is waking up.)

But I didn't write it down.

I never know I'm dreaming when I am. I mean, everything seems all right, then. Natural. Unless it's a nightmare, then I guess it's not all right but it still feels real and when I wake up, I'm always surprised. Sometimes I think I'll wake up next to you again but whenever I roll over, that half of the bed is empty.

Midgar is a fucking mess.

Midgar is _always_ a fucking mess, so I guess I should be used to that.

I'm not.

The air smells like all sorts of different things, smoke and rain and this raw kind of smell, as though the debris and metal is rotting instead of just rusting. There's bodies trapped under the girders and cement, so maybe that's why. I feel like I can almost touch the smell, it covers up everything and it settles into your skin. I can't scrub it off in the shower no matter how hard I try.

This is how I stay alive, you know? This is how I try to stay sane, talking to you in my mind as though you're right here listening. This is what I do. Dream about you. Make up messages that never get written down or sent, letters that only you could see the ink on. Sometimes I didn't even know who you were when I was talking, only that there was someone out there who used to listen to me.

I'm more tired now than ever before. I think it's because I never expected to live through this, I guess. It's more like being numb than anything else. We all thought the world was over but it isn't. But things aren't right yet, either.

I want to rest. But I can't sleep because I'll dream about the wrong things. I want to dream about you. Are you awake or are you dreaming right now? I wake myself up saying the names of people I don't know and places I've never been.

There's too much to be done these days; clean-up crews all over the place and they think there might be problems with diseases from the corpses; hospitals overflowing and every time I turn around something else is catching fire or on fire or was just put out from being on fire. Reconstruction, they call it, rebuilding, renewal, rebirth and who gives a fuck.

They have lists of things to do. They have lists of things they want me to do. I'm not sure how to tell them that I don't want to do any of them. I just want to sit down and close my eyes and try to breathe without tasting ashes in my mouth.

Lists aren't bad. They probably think I don't like them. That's not true. Lists are all right because you can predict what's coming when you have them. Lists only go in one direction; not like my memories, unraveling and twisting and snarling into tangles.

I make lists of things to do with you. They're orderly and I like that, long straight lines of words and images marching away into the dark. They keep me company when it's too quiet. I'd like to ride with you in a car on a warm afternoon down a road we've never taken before. I'd like to let you drive and watch your profile as we go, clean and sharp against the sunlight, with a cold bottle of something wedged between my thighs, something that we wipe the condensation off and we take turns drinking from it. I want to argue with you over who gets the last swallow of it and who gets to lick the remainder off the other's lips and who stops that car first so we don't drive off the road. I want to ride a motorcycle with you, shouting to be heard over the roar of engine, feeling the thrum beneath us. I want to race you on a 'bo, galloping over the grasslands until the birds refuse to run anymore and we jump off and I tackle you or you tackle me and run your hands all over while I get grass stains on my clothes.

Lists are solid and you can add things to the ends of them if you need to. In those parts of my mind, in those ideas and wishes, we're always going somewhere. We always have somewhere to be. It doesn't get cut short like that time you went somewhere that I couldn't go.

But I don't want to think about that. 

What are you thinking of right now, Zack? 

Sometimes, what I want is something quieter and we've already gotten to where we're going. Sometimes it's things we've already done, like watch the rain come down from the inside of a barracks window or get silly-drunk on cheap Midgar beer, watching stupid movies in broken air conditioning and laughing so hard that we prickle with tears. Sometimes it's you holding me while we stare into a fire, smelling smoke that doesn't carry the scent of people burning or chemicals exploding. 

I want to lick shower-water off your shoulder blades and trace the scars with my fingers, wondering and asking how you came by each one. I want to work on your tangled hair for you and bitch over how you must never comb it on your missions, listening to you swear and fidget and squirm and finally lose patience. I want you to jerk me down into a welter of wet towels and sheets and laughter, demanding a kiss for each yank.

We did do those things, didn't we? Sometimes, I have a hard time remembering. I'm pretty sure you were the one I came home to, day after day, but I don't want to trust my memories. They've let me down too often. But they're all I have, I guess, even if they're not always right.

Back then, we didn't show it as much as we could've. We didn't have to. You knew, I knew, and if everyone else knew, that was okay but we didn't have to tell them. It wasn't something we discussed, was it? It wasn't one of those midnight conversations when it seems like the entire world was asleep except for us, was it? I didn't mind, I never did. I wanted you all for me. Everyone thought we were sleeping together right from the start and maybe they were right, but that's not the point. It was never the point. It was just you and me.

I used to want you inside my skin. When you were inside me, the kind of inside that's a mechanics of hands and skin, heat and wet, it was having you by letting you have me. That was the closest I could get to being like you. Everyone wanted that, not just me, you know? They looked at Sephiroth and they knew they couldn't be perfection like that but they saw you and just wanted to be you, you know? They just wanted to be you.

Want. Wanted. I wanted things back then and I want these things still. I want a lot of things. I don't think I'm going to get them. That's all right. It's all right because sometimes I'm not sure if I don't have you here after all, ghosting along the motions I make, nestled right beneath my skin.

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(Listing the past, the best of it, in order to remember. This is a familiar hand, a grip that guides and extends a chance. This is a light so bright that nothing but the chance is visible, and this is that chance falling away again, just as fast. Time passes and nothing can stop it. This is trying to ignore that anyway. This is the future, or maybe the present, or maybe just a wrinkle in time.)

(This is the closest intimacy possible, closer even than anything that involves bed-sheets and kisses, this is knowing each beat of a pulse and being safe inside someone else's skin. This is a strange progression, eyes to eyes, a smile, a footstep, a hand. This is a whisper of clothing falling and a whisper of voice promising. This is something so purely perfect that it can't possibly be real, can't possibly be meant for who it seems.)

(This is your hand.)

(This is what you gave me, this is what I took. This is you and me, Zack, Cloud, ZackandCloud, the two of us overlapping. This is where the lines blur and blend until it's hard to tell.)

Are you thinking about me? Now? Right now?

__

(This is a wish.)

I write my wishes down.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and I'm confused. I'm twenty-one but I'm sixteen. How can I be twenty-one? Five years have passed and I still look like I'm sixteen and feel like I'm sixteen, trapped in the wrong body, the wrong mind, the wrong _world_. Sometimes I just stare at my eyes without turning on the light. How can they look like that? It's not right the way I'm not me anymore. I mean, if I wasn't going to be me, then I'd rather be you. But since I'm someone else entirely, it doesn't seem fair.

I like to think you're here right now. You're in the way I walk, the way I talk, the way I hold a weapon. Everything used to be a part of you. I could be your legacy. I'm you, you're in me, I've got you safe inside where you won't disappear. 

But you always do, somehow. Like waking up from a dream.

It's like an itch I can't quite reach or a ghost of a feeling in a limb that isn't there. I've seen Barret touch where his arm used to be, looking surprised when he drums his fingers on the gun's surface. Even Vincent does it to himself when he thinks no one is watching, absently rubbing at the metal like he expects it to respond, to magically be skin and bone and muscle again. It's the kind of feeling that makes me squirm and think about things. I don't like it. I don't like thinking about this at all. 

There are things I've done that you wouldn't have thought I could do. I could talk about some of them; some of the others I don't know why, or I don't remember, or they never actually happened. But there are things you don't know about, things that happened before I met you and after… after you left and I don't want to talk about them. You've done just as much as me, probably even more, all for your own reasons or because you were following orders. But I'm afraid you might not understand or accept the reasons why _I've_ done what I did. 

That's all right. I don't want you to know about them. I hoped you wouldn't ever know. But you probably did. You knew everything. And you knew a hell of a lot more than I did.

Things have happened _to_ me too, and you might not understand those. Maybe you would, but I think that scares me more. 

I wanted you inside me because I could get lost in you, more lost than I am now, stumbling through pieces of Midgar and pieces of people who lived in Midgar. I could be a whole new person. I loved you and everything about you, even the little things, you know? You laughed when I tried to tell you that. You used to say it was all or nothing, you would smile and wink and spin your sword--- I could barely lift it back then-- and say, but we have everything anyway so it doesn't matter. We had everything.

All or nothing. That's not true. It's not anything. It's just… nothing. You're dead. Except you're not. Are you?

Do you remember _me_?

Sometimes I think I forgot you because it was better than hating you. You left, Zack, you left and I know it was because you died and you couldn't help it but you left me. How could you be perfect when you left me? You promised, you knew I needed you but you left anyway. 

I would've died for you. You shouldn't have been the one lying there in the mud and the rain and the red everywhere, screaming in the background, screaming Zack, I'm sorry, Zack, don't leave me, Zack, no, don't, please don't go, Zack, I love you, don't go, Zack I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. 

Sometimes I think that was the only thing you ever did that wasn't perfect. Making an exit at the wrong time. Being the wrong person to leave. It's that same itch, the feeling that something's not where it should be. You're not here with me.

I've been in the wrong place before. I've gone around the wrong corner, opened the wrong door, said the wrong words. What do you know of that? Did you ever get lost when you first joined up? Talk to me, you'd say when we were done but we weren't asleep yet, tell me about yourself.

But I didn't have anything to tell you, I just had questions. I have questions. 

What did you want me to tell you? Did you want to know about the things I know now? How you have to hold a sword just right if you want to get enough force to decapitate someone and how blood makes your skin itch when it dries and you don't have time to wash it off? Especially your own? Especially blood that has mako in it?

You must have known a lot of it already. You must have known that you can pass out if you cast too many summon spells with materia and that you'll wake up with blackened skin on your palms and an aching feeling right behind your eyes. You must have known about waking up after a jolt from a revive materia and feeling how the mako burns inside you like you're being boiled from the inside out. You must have known how you feel so strange after waking up in a tent, like you know you're supposed to be tired and your mind still feels that way but your body decided to go change things without you. You must have known a lot about waking up except for the one time when you didn't. 

Or did you want to know about the things from before I knew you, the things I wouldn't tell you? How it feels to be invisible? How it feels to know that just because you're short and can't do ten pull-ups when they say to and get lost easily, people can do whatever they want to you? 

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(Listing the past, or what shouldn't have been, in order to forget. This is a memory prickling with pain around the edges, with sensations more real than waking life, this is the sharp biting smell of chlorine, this is steam rising from warm water on a cold floor. This is an icy knot of fear inside and this is a sweat breaking out over the skin that has nothing to do with the spray of hot water. This is laughter, this is silence that goes on too long, this is the wrong thing to break the silence with. This is the past played out in the mind.)

(This is pain.) 

(This is hands and knees on a tile floor, this is hands and eyes touching all over, this is a memory that holds the past, or maybe the past holding a memory. This is the sodden feel of wet clothes, this is the heavy sound of clothes being pulled off and thrown across the room. This is slipping and struggling against a tile floor and no, no, no.)

(This is what you did not know and I would not say.)

I told them no, Zack, I said it over and over again but no one listened to me. They all just laughed and someone turned all the showers on and someone else stood in front of the door. And then there were hands everywhere and I couldn't breathe and I couldn't move and I couldn't do anything except close my eyes and think of things that were far away and not the taste or the noise or the smell. 

__

(This is shame.)

So I try not to think of it now.

Not too much to it, though. Lie there until they're gone, wait for the water to go cold. Get up and walk. Find your clothes if they haven't ripped them all to hell or tossed them in the sink or whatever. Get dressed, get out. Don't cry—not ever, especially not while they're doing it because then the snot bubbles up in your nose and throat and you can't breathe at all.

When I went for the physical that they make you take, I think the doctor knew. But he must have seen it too many times for it to really dig at him anymore. You just agree and wait until he lets you leave like they let you. It's all about waiting. It's all about saying the right things. 

(Yes, sir, I know how brushing your teeth so hard makes the enamel comes off. Yes, I know that flossing that much really isn't necessary. And I didn't tell him how I had to because otherwise I could still taste it coating my mouth, like the cheap stuff they call butter that they give you in the cafeteria.) 

(Yes, sir, I know eating enough to fulfill the daily caloric intake is necessary for top performance. I guess it's because the rations aren't that great, sir. And I didn't tell him that I don't like my mouth to be so full, that I don't like swallowing things, that it sticks in my throat and makes me want to throw up but I can't because then you get in worse trouble.)

(Yes, sir, I know about getting enough sleep at night. No, sir, I'm not sneaking out to go on the town or getting drunk. Yes sir, I know staying awake causes fatigue and stress and tension and fuckall else. And I didn't tell him that I was too afraid to sleep because that would mean dreaming, and I didn't tell him that sometimes _they_ wouldn't let me sleep and it's another late night in the shower room with the sound of water all around but it's not enough to block everything else out, never.)

It just gets to the point where it's all kind of ridiculous, you know? It's just… stupid. Stupid to think you can say it in words and tell someone, even just a doctor who just asked you to turn your head and cough and doesn't want anything more than to slap his signature on the sheet, verify that another body can go on marching, and go home himself. I didn't want to talk about it, he didn't want to hear it. It's all just about waiting it out.

So, it only happened a few times after I met you. I thought of you when they were doing it, how after it was all over, I could go find you or wait for you to come home so I could hold your hand and smile and say I missed you. It pretty much stopped after I met you but I thought of you when it did happen. I thought of you.

What about you, though?

But what would you have done, Zack? What if you were me or I was you or one of us was perfect and knew what to do? 

What would you have said to them to make them stop? How hard would you have hit them to make them back away? Did you want to know what it felt like to lie on the tiles with someone's cock up your ass and someone's cock in your mouth and nothing beneath your fingers to hold onto except for water that you know you're bleeding into?

I have questions, Zack. I need you to tell me if I'm sane or not.

Did you want to know what it felt like to lie awake and know that those things were your life and you'd have to put up with them because there wasn't anything else you _could_ do? How it felt to learn to try and get used to it because otherwise you'd go crazy? It hurt, but it wasn't even about the pain after a while. They have materia for that. 

I don't think so. I can't ever imagine you wanting to know because I can't imagine you being able to understand something like that in the first place. Why should you? It never happened to you. 

I wouldn't want you to feel you had to understand it. I wouldn't want you to feel you had to know about it. You knew _something_ about it, I wouldn't have met you otherwise, but it wasn't your life. I wouldn't want you to feel you had to know about it. I wouldn't.

I think maybe you just asked because you always knew the right thing to do. You knew the right thing to say. When it was with you, it was something that was okay to do, although that doesn't make sense. It was different and I know it's messed up, I _know_. I _know_ it shows how fucked up my mind probably is because it's not hard for me to separate what they did to me and what you did with me. You do things differently, you act differently, you never said, "Swallow it all or I'll break both your arms."

Everything was just different. Maybe you just wanted to know things because you were just nice that way; you knew how to get people to talk to you. Maybe you just cared enough to sit still and nod at all the right places and smile or frown when you were supposed to. You liked to talk but you liked to listen. You liked to fix things. 

You were the best thing I could have found and I think that's why everything turned out the way it did. You only get that lucky once. I knew things were real with you. I knew how perfect it was. I know you cared enough to hold me when I couldn't sleep or when I woke up and I couldn't talk about what I was dreaming about. 

Everyone says I need to talk about things to get over them and to remember them. But I just want people to leave me alone.

It doesn't really matter, I guess. By that point, they were just happening in dreams and I was safe with you. They're just dreams now, even if you're not here anymore. Just dreams. I just don't like to let people touch me.

I told you I make lists of things that I want to do with you. But I also make lists of things I don't want to forget. Your name. My name. How old I am. How old you would be. Sephiroth. His face, your face, everyone's face except my own.

I make lists of things I want to forget, too. You wouldn't think that would work. You're right. It doesn't. You're always right.

When I look at the mirror, I wonder what I should be seeing. I wonder what other people see when they look at me. I wonder if they see all the faces, people I've killed with my own hands and people that have died around me, blank faces looking surprised with the news of their own death, draining, slackening, going, going, gone. I wonder if you used to see the faces too. I wouldn't have asked you. I don't think I could have dared. 

I dream about them at night and I dream of you. 

I dream about waking up. Isn't that stupid? To dream about doing something that's the opposite of what you're really doing? I think I dream about it so much because I've had to do it so much. Once you start doing something it gets to be a habit and then it gets to be normal and then you can't picture not doing it anymore.

Sephiroth made me wake up. I miss him, sometimes. I can't help it. You can't just let go of something, you know? If it's part of your life? And he's been part of my life so long, it's hard to remember when he wasn't. Even if most of it was when he wasn't Sephiroth and everything he did hurt or destroyed or something like that.

That doesn't make sense, does it?

Lots of things don't. It's okay.

But I can't help missing him, or at least, feeling the fact he's not here. You can't help noticing something important is gone. You'd notice that your hand was gone if you woke up without one, wouldn't you? He was… _something_, anyway. But I think about you more, these days. I have to, otherwise I might forget who you were. And I don't want to hate you because you left. 

I killed him, Zack. I killed him and it still hurts. Would you hate me for doing it?

Sephiroth was everything for a long time, before and after. But now I have you in my mind again and Sephiroth was perfect and I guess I did love him too, even if he never knew, but you…

You were my best friend. Part of me knows that you were my _only_ friend. But you were my best friend, first and forever, always and only, world without end, a-fucking-men and I don't know why I feel so sad when I think of that. Maybe because you're not here. Maybe because I miss you.

Maybe you've missed me as much as I've missed you. Well, maybe almost as much.

Sometimes I wonder if I dreamed everything before this. I've woken up in someone else's life but maybe it really is my own and maybe I'm just going crazy. If it was a dream I want to get back in. Things made more sense there. You were there.

Did you ever turn a corner and expect to find yourself somewhere else? In another place, maybe even in another time? It's like waking up, weird déjà vu.

But I'm here. You're not here and I've gotten used to that. I've gotten used to a lot of things, after all. I've gotten used to seeing my eyes and my face in the mirror each morning, the sound of Sephiroth in my mind, the feel of the scars, and the taste of wanting what isn't here. I put them in my lists.

I don't think I'll ever get used to the dreams. I had a dream about you last night. I had a dream where it was summer and it was somewhere I've never been and we weren't going anywhere, and there was a beach and it was all quiet except for us and the ocean. There were birds somewhere, but I couldn't see them, just hear them. And the sand was warm and my feet were bare, and that stupid picnic basket with the bottom that collapses unless you hold it the right way, you know, the one that I kept telling you to get rid of but you wouldn't, was sitting nearby and there was nothing except blue and gold, ocean and sky and sand and us and I was so damn happy that I thought I would die. And then I woke up saying your name and crying and I did want to die. 

If this is a dream and I wake up, where will I be? If before was a dream and I'm awake now, is it any better? How long have I been asleep? Why didn't you wake me before you left?

I want to ask you these things but I'm afraid of not hearing anything back more than any answers you could ever had said.

So getting ready for bed is easy because there's not much to do. I sleep the way I slept with you, Zack, and it's okay, it's all okay because I've got you here, in my clothes that I wear in the day and the shadow that the buster sword casts where it leans on the wall and in the glow of my eyes in the bathroom mirror and the way the water tastes like rust, the same way your apartment water tasted and Zack, it's all the same and I don't know if I'm here or with you five years ago and Zack, I don't know what the hell I'm doing without you and Zack, I'm afraid I'll forget your face or your name if I don't say it enough, Zack, Zack, Zack, I miss you, Zack, you were always stronger, faster, _better,_ at this and everything… 

I don't cry anymore. I just sleep. I'm not going to cry. I'm going to bed and I'm going to think about things I want, things I loved, things that are gone--- 

Things I'm not going to get. 

I just want to see you again. 

I'm going to sleep. And then I'll dream. Everything will be right again, everything will be natural and things will be as happy as they ever were in real life. All the boundaries blur; who gives a fuck about reality and it doesn't matter which is the real world after all, it doesn't matter when the comfort is there because that's the only real thing that matters. You're there, I'm there, there's warmth and laughter and love and if I'm lucky, I won't ever wake up but the important thing is that's enough. It has to be enough.

Everyone says that it's such a relief waking up from a dream, like when you're falling and you see the ground coming closer and you can't breath and all you know is that it'll all be over in a second but then you wake up. 

Everyone says so. New beginnings and all that. They say it's good to wake up and know you're alive.

I could have told them I hate it.

***


	2. Epilogue

Title: Maze of Words

Summary: "And Zack came back the very next day…" And Sephiroth just tagged along. Yaoi.

Warning & Disclaimer: WAFF. All characters belong to Squaresoft.

Notes: Because happy endings shouldn't be so rare.

__

Falling in a summer daydream  


I remember what I knew  


Nothing that I can't hold on to  


Or return to  


Even you

~october project, where you are

__

Epilogue

"Hey. Wake up," someone said.

Light and motion flooded his awareness, searing into his eyes when he tried to open them. Squinting didn't make anything better and all that he could make out was a scorching blaze of white with hazy gold dots around the edges. He blinked rapidly several times and it did nothing but make the dots swirl in a frenzy and the whiteness churn about in a way that made him mildly dizzy.

"Ow," he managed, and flung one arm over his eyes. His whole face felt tight and prickly, and he tentatively identified the heat that beat down on him as sunshine and the steady roar in the background as water. 

He heard the sound of footsteps moving away from him. His mouth felt rank with sleep and he wanted something to drink. No one replied to him and he heard nothing except wind and water, so he dismissed the voice as the remnant of a dream. Hell. Where was he, anyway?

When he rolled onto his stomach, he realized that his shirt, armor, boots, and socks were gone, and somehow his pants had met with a mysterious accident that left most of them missing up to his knees. At some point in time, an indeterminate number of bandersnatch had mated and shed and probably died in the back of his skull. 

Al right. List his obstacles. Easier to get it all done in one go. He was defenseless in a place he couldn't identify, with no recollection of how he got there, hearing things, and from the feel and flush on his whole body, sunburned. 

Maybe one thing at a time would be easier after all.

Bracing for the light this time, he opened his eyes again and saw, instead of a vast white-gold expanse, a vast tan-gold expanse. He picked up a handful of sand bemusedly and let it trickle out of his fist again, shaking his hand when a few grains stuck between his fingers. There was a small pile of seashells sitting next to him. He picked one up, put it down, and stretched. The joints of his shoulders popped and he winced when he felt the sting of sunburn on them as well. Next to him in a small tumbled heap was a white t-shirt. He put it on automatically, feeling warm cloth that was thin from constant wash and wear.

He wiggled his fingers, and then his toes, counted both sets, and then shook himself all over. Clothes and such aside, nothing was missing or cut off, no new scars, and the pain in his head was dissolving as the breeze lifted the damp hair from his temples. All right.

Up ahead of him, he could see the soft beige swells of sand dunes and the velvety shadows of the hollows between as they stretched into a tawny distance. Sand as far as he could see from his seated position, and behind him, the ocean. Ocean, sky, sand, endless vaults of blue-green-gold-white, and almost ridiculously idyllic. 

The thoughts came slowly because the vastness of his surroundings seemed to swallow up motion and make it insignificant, the sunlight feeling as slow and gold as spilled honey. He sorted through all he knew on sand and water and sunshine. He thought about enemy skills gathered from the shores of Junon, thought about how sand was bad for a battle, didn't give very sure footing in a one on one fight, even if it could cushion the fall a bit. Beaches in Mideel yielded both the best materia and worst monsters because of the proximity of the Lifestream. Wutai's shores were mostly made of pebbles.

He tried to think about what he should do, what the textbooks would say. What Zack would have said. The training scenarios for troopers had never seemed to cover this in great detail. Be on your guard, he guessed, try to identify distinguishing characteristics of the foreign territory. Boil your drinking water. The High Star points north. Don't wipe your ass with itching weed. 

He looked around again. Sand and salt water and bright daylight, not a star or a plant thing except abandoned strands of kelp to be found. No problem, then.

Be armed. That one made sense, at least. He looked beside him for his sword and couldn't find it. 

A long ago instruction from a textbook surfaced in his memory, on not letting the materia slots of a sword get touched by sand in particular because it could scratch the settings and require a completely new set of aurum coatings. This did not seem likely to be a problem either.

All right. Nothing that couldn't be handled. He lifted his face to the sky and closed his eyes, trying to think. It really wasn't all that hot, the wind was blowing briskly enough to lift his hair and make him a little breathless. The time was later than he had expected, more like the tail end of the afternoon rather than high noon as he'd first thought with the sun.

Breathe in, breathe out, but there was no surge of alarm or waking up to the feel of danger. His mind didn't seem to care and his body was content with sitting splay-legged and playing absently with the sand and shells. Survival tactics and suspicion didn't come; the names of the shells knocked together gently inside his head and mixed themselves, cowrie and conch, scallop and whelk, limpet and mussel. 

After a while he thought, maybe, that he should be a little more concerned about this but unease refused to linger in his mind, nothing but optimism. He felt stupidly, inexplicably happy to be sitting in the sunshine with the breeze in his hair and sleep in his mouth and his sunburn. 

He couldn't remember the last time he had sat still this way. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt like he was soaked so completely in senseless, transparent happiness, like the sunshine soaked into his body. It was like going back to the brief snatch of very young childhood where perfect safety and comfort still existed, like coming home after a long journey.

Something about this place besides the weather and view was right, in a way that was bone-deep and solid.

He closed his eyes and opened them again, quickly, just in case. Pinched his leg, wasn't surprised when nothing happened. He had had dreams that involved pain before and he was never sure what pinching yourself to find out if you were dreaming was supposed to prove, anyway. He wasn't sure he wanted to be dreaming.

Lying back down on his stomach on the sand that was just short of being too hot-- wouldn't be too uncomfortable to walk on now-- he reached his arms out to both sides and stretched as much as he could, just because he could.

The breeze picked up; he heard the whisper of shifting sand. Above him, the light suddenly felt muted, as though a cloud had passed over the sun and a drop of water struck his back. And again. And again. Couldn't be rain, the sky had been so clear. He rolled over, squinted, and suffered a very mild bout of insanity.

"Hey," Zack said, smiling and dripping wet. "You should've come in the water."

Something somewhere outside Cloud deliberately hauled back and kicked him in the chest, directly beneath his breastbone, a huge jolt of a sensation, not pain, just blind impact. Something somewhere inside Cloud made an O of surprise, maybe in his throat or chest, but not his face; his face was stiff-caught in a rictus of what he thought might be shock.

"Wha--" he began blankly, and then, "Zack--" and then, "what---" again, but in between the words and the breath, Zack had shaken himself off in a spray of salt-water and sand, and then dropped flat beside him in a wet sprawl of limbs.

"You got burned," Zack said, reaching up to press one finger against his cheek. It felt cool and real. "I _told_ you that you can't just go out without lotion on." The rest of Zack felt cool as well when it pressed against him. "I'll put aloe on your back tonight, if you want. I think we have some in the bathroom, somewhere under the sink." Cool and a little damp all over as though he really had just finished swimming. "Have you been listening to a word I said?"

"No," he managed to get out. Zack's hands. Zack's hands were touching him. Zack was lying next to him in a pair of trunks that had seen better days. He couldn't look away.

"Sleepyhead." He shrugged one bronzed shoulder as if to indicate himself. "You'll tan eventually." A hand strayed to the waistband of his shorts and tugged him down completely on top of Zack. "You don't look so bad, anyway." 

He couldn't be dreaming. This was too cruel to be dreaming, if it was. There was almost too much to take in and try to accept: The flash of a familiar grin promising trouble and a hand on the nape of his neck, arm around his waist, cool damp skin all against his front and the sun on his back. 

"Good enough to eat."

This place was strange but it was easy to remember and tremble at the familiarity, cinnamon-sweetness with a tang of salt, the curve of his lower lip and wet dart of his tongue, and the way Zack hummed a little deep in his throat when he kissed back. It seemed the easiest thing to do, the right thing, the only thing he _wanted_ to do.

And after all, this was luxury he'd never thought to have again, this was kissing and touching while still in clothes, letting the shirt be pushed aside and then up until it was shoved up all the way under his arms. Zack's hair dragged like wet coarse silk through his fingers and there was still sand in his scalp. The touch of his lips became lighter, shallow little touches meant to tease and tickle the skin more than anything. 

"Ow," Zack said, and rolled over him so he was on the bottom and Zack could sit up. "What the hell is this?" He reached under and pulled out one of the shells, the vaguely heart shaped one that opened like a pair of hands, now broken down the middle and in two identical pieces. "Oh. Find any good ones?"

Cloud tried to sit up completely, but didn't resist the hand that absently shoved against his chest, pushing him down. There was a red imprint on Zack's back the exact shape of one half of the shell's curved edge and he reached a finger out to trace the fading mark. 

Zack's hair was still dripping, and most of the water was falling on him. When he braced himself on his elbows, the water ran down his chest and he followed one runnel with his eyes, slant to the left, barely avoiding his navel, almost to his hip now. There was something odd about his own abdomen that he was missing, something about the smooth, unmarked surface that was not quite right.

"You're such a little packrat," Zack said affectionately, rubbing his thumb over the smooth blue-black surface of the shell. "You see something shiny and your whole brain shuts down. Seph'll kill you if you get sand in the bed again, you know." 

He tossed the shell down and his body followed the motion, over Cloud's for an instant and then against it again. The mark on Zack's back was almost gone and it reminded him of his own body, how he should have a scar around that area, two neat lines on his stomach and back, exit and entry from a sword.

"But it's --" he started to say, and after a little while, "I'm not--" but it was easier to kiss than to speak and easier to wonderingly run his hands over smooth skin and wet hair. 

So good, too good to accept, that familiar curve of shoulder fitting just into his hand, swell of lower lip. You only get so lucky once. He was shivering despite the heat when a hand still cool from the ocean slipped past the waistband of his pants and squeezed in just the right way; and he thought he might die then and there, just break open and fill up with the sea and sky. 

Zack's body rocked against him, easy and smooth as the sea; Zack's hands stroked him firmly and he let his own hands go where they wanted, pinch and tug, caress and rest. It was easy to use and be used and he stared up into the sky, tracing cloud-shapes and with that something inside him still making the O of surprise.

Something was on his ear, some part of Zack's mouth, teeth or tongue or lips or whatever, doing its best to fuck his ear. Zack's breath was hot against the side of his face and the words that tumbled into his ear were a trifle unsteady, although his grip didn't change. "Wanna finish here or home?"

His mind seized on the words, trying to comprehend. Here? Home? _Home? _ Whatever Zack was doing had spread away from just his ear to his neck and he was having a hard time thinking.

"Home?" he managed to ask, hands scrabbling over Zack's back, searching for a grip, on Zack or reality, he didn't know. But reality. Reality. This was reality. This wasn't a dream.

Whatever it was or wasn't, anyway. He could settle for whatever it chose to be. 

"You think so?" Zack sounded a little disappointed but made a noise of assent. "Okay. Gotta head back eventually, I guess." 

Physical separation felt like a blow the second time. Couldn't lose this. He tried to pull a startled Zack back, frantically digging his fingers into whatever he could grasp. Which, as it turned out, was mostly hair, dragging Zack not unwillingly with him in an awkward spill on the sand. 

"Jeez, it's not like I mind having hair or anything." Zack said, and gingerly patted his scalp. "You're bad for my health." His fingers threaded through Cloud's hair as well. "Not to mention my self control. I thought we were going home."

"Right," he replied distractedly. "What's today? Where is everybody?" 

Zack's eyebrows went up. "Everybody?" The fingers in his hair were walking their way back down to the nape of his neck, and he shivered when Zack scratched the short hairs absently. "Dunno. Just us, I guess. Don't think anyone's going to come trespassing when you-know-who is walking around with his sword. I think he'd take that damn thing to bed with him if _you-_--" This earned him a quick poke in the ribs. "---Didn't always sprawl out and take up all the room."

"I don't sprawl," he said automatically and the mask of surprise on his face felt like it was melting in the sun. He could feel himself aching to finish what they had started. The blue-balls, that was what they always called it when he was back in Shinra. "And you snore." 

"I do no such thing," Zack replied, with that _look_ he always used, a face of total stunned appallment. And then Zack's tanned arm came down heavy across his waist and the same fingers that had been lingering on his side started trying to get at his unprotected ribs in earnest. 

He squirmed away and then dove back for his own attack and it felt good to laugh and wiggle and shed dignity like clothing, better than anything had for a long time. He wondered why he had needed to know where everyone was, he wondered _who_ everyone was, and then he stopped wondering at all.

After a few minutes of cheerful rolling and busy hands, Zack stopped wrestling and looked into the sun, barely squinting. "Well, speak of the devil."

When he managed to sit up and look ahead in the direction Zack was gazing, Cloud could make out someone standing on the dunes and waving to them as the wind whipped his hair out in a bright blaze of silver, flicker-quick-snap, and his heart clenched inside him with the same motion. 

Sephiroth.

He was dead. He really was dead, he had to be if he was seeing this. He'd missed his own death. Horribly careless of himself. He'd _soon_ be dead. But--- no, it was Sephiroth. Sephiroth. Sephiroth with open hands and wearing something not completely black and he couldn't really tell in the distance, but he thought--- Cloud thought that Sephiroth might be smiling.

Zack raked hair out of his eyes and got to his feet, pulling Cloud with him, waving back to Sephiroth. "Come on, let's go get him. You know how stubborn he gets when he thinks he's missing out on swapping bodily fluids."

The words themselves went by unnoticed, all he could understand was that if Zack could speak of Sephiroth in such an easy tone, no regret or anger, than Sephiroth could be real too, or at least be the Sephiroth he had wondered about during so many sleepless nights. He started to run, despite the ache, and heard Zack behind him. The wind was picking up and flurries of sand whipped sharp against his legs. 

He thought he could hear laughter on the wind and wasn't surprised. Running on sand was never easy and he thought that he and Zack probably looked a sight. Zack was laughing and cursing and throwing threats, exhortations, and the occasional shell that he still carried.

Almost there, and it _was_ Sephiroth. And he was suddenly there, almost close enough to touch Sephiroth and he skidded to a halt, sand kicking up in dusty eddies over his bare feet. Close enough to touch. He had run faster than he thought he had. 

Dreaming, maybe, instead of dead. He had had a lot of dreams before. Sometimes he still did. He remembered a conversation when he was sixteen, Zack telling him that people dreamed every night, they just didn't always remember it, so that meant he had had twenty-one years worth of dreams now. And then Zack had gotten all into it and scribbled on a piece of paper, his teeth worrying at his lower lip and finally said that meant roughly five thousand eight hundred and forty two nights of dreaming, factored into the fact there were several cycles of dreams a night, not just one… 

It made him dizzy just thinking about it. He swayed on his feet, trying to force his mind open any wider than it already was.

Look, but don't touch. It'd been part of his life for so long before he met Zack, before he saw Sephiroth. Look, but don't touch. He'd never been close enough to touch before, not Sephiroth. Zack, yes, but not Sephiroth. Look, don't touch, look, don't touch, look, don't touch don't touch don't touch.

He thought he might've changed his mind about everything.

There was almost no warning except Sephiroth's eyes narrowing and then a hasty step forward. Zack's tackle hit him squarely in the legs and he plowed forward. He fell, and as the ground came up to meet him, he had a fleeting sense of alarm, the only thing that made him anxious so far, as though suddenly colliding against a memory or fear as old as the sea. 

And then Sephiroth's hands were against his chest, Sephiroth was lunging forward for him and he let himself fall and be caught. He grabbed a handful of silver-white hair in his flail to stay upright and heard a short noise of pain, wondered if it was him or Sephiroth. The muscle of Sephiroth's shoulder was hard and warm; he smelled clean, as if just from a shower.

He must have died again, or maybe the first time, but he didn't remember doing so. He hoped he hadn't. He had never seen Sephiroth smiling like this before.

"I'm glad," Sephiroth said with a long-suffering tone, "you finally saw fit to come home."

Coming home. Sephiroth's hands felt right on his shoulders and he thought he might have dreamed about this embrace before. Mint, that was it; he smelled aftershave or cologne with a faint hint of mint to it and the warmth of the sun on Sephiroth's clothes, as if he'd stood for a long time to watch them

Arms tightened around him. Sephiroth managed to look put-upon and indulgent at the same time, his face the same but different. He couldn't name what made the difference at first and he couldn't, for the life of him, seem to be able to seize on why he thought Sephiroth's face _should _be different.

"Does the world have to fucking end in order for you two to remember me?" Zack said, yanking on his ankle. He nearly lost his balance again, until Sephiroth steadied him. 

"Thanks," he said, and the word came automatic from his mouth as though he'd said it to Sephiroth before and just as easily. He looked at the two of them, then, and took one step back from both. They watched him back.

Zack looked the most energetic, despite being the one lying on the ground. Zack looked ready to lunge up and give Cloud the Welcome To The End Of The World And Everything You Know Is Wrong secret handshake and decoder ring. Zack looked like someone who very badly wanted to get laid.

Sephiroth looked like Sephiroth and he couldn't see it any other way.

Content. He thought he could finally name that look on Sephiroth's face. He thought it was like Sephiroth had absorbed whatever it was that this place gave off, the aura of perfect happiness that outlasted sunburns and unfinished sex on the beach. 

He thought Sephiroth looked how he felt, Zack too, even though Zack was grinning and Sephiroth's smile was curled up on the left corner of his mouth and his own face was still probably looking confused. He thought it was good that they all matched. 

Zack propped himself up on one elbow and his smile grew wider. "See, I told you we'd get home eventually. Right?"

So good, like the best kind of reward or a sought blessing, like heaven and it was finally, finally real, he had what he wanted for whatever reason. Didn't know why, didn't care why, and it didn't matter, he was where he belonged and he had everything. 

"Yeah. Home."

Joy swelled up wild and free and finally overflowed. He laughed at the sky, spun around, and fell with no fear at all.

***

He woke up in a square of sunlight and held perfectly still for a moment, unable to identify the feeling that filled him up so completely, as vast and boundless as the sky he could see through the window. He couldn't remember exactly what had happened to make him feel this way, so that waking up today was so different. He couldn't remember much beyond the simple fact that waking up before this had not felt as good as this.

If he turned his head to the right, he saw Zack lying on his back with his mouth open just a little. The only marks on his body where the press of the sheets had dug tender red creases on the skin. To the left were the long clean lines of Sephiroth's back and shoulders, as well as most of the blankets.

Beyond Sephiroth was a wooden floor scattered with a tangle of clothes, shoes, and other human detritus. He could see sand on the floor, waiting to be swept up or into the cracks. There was a broom leaning in the corner, probably for just that purpose. The light was moving across the room and he saw everything as briefly shining, the sand as a drift of gold dust, Zack's skin as amber, the sun-bleached wood of the shutter as silver. Sephiroth's spill of hair held its own pale fire.

The bedside table had a comb and a photograph on it. When the light hit the table, the four light hairs tangled in the comb gleamed bright; the glass cover of the photograph reflected blank white but he thought he knew who was in the picture.

It was nice to be there. It was nice to be almost too warm, feeling the body-heat on both sides of him and the blankets above, to stare at the ceiling and feel as pleasantly blank. 

It was better to think that he didn't have to worry too hard about dreams, especially. He closed his eyes and let himself drift a little. When he turned over, maybe a minute later, maybe an hour later, Sephiroth had also turned over, propped on one elbow, and was watching him through heavy-lidded, half-closed eyes. 

"Hey," he asked, and his own voice sounded rough with sleep, a little bit of a drag on the vowels. "Hey. How come you're awake?" 

"So I could look at you," Sephiroth replied. He reached over and ran his hand down the length of Cloud's spine. 

"You should be sleeping still," he said, but he couldn't help smiling and arching a little into stroking fingers on his back. "Zack is." 

"Zack _was_," Zack said from somewhere north of the sheets. 

"So, why were you looking at me, then?" he asked, and he moved a little closer so that the finger-touches could become broad sweeping strokes of both palms. 

"Because," Sephiroth said and his mouth on Cloud's was just as warm as the sunshine lying on the bedspread, "what _else _would I do if I woke up?" 

"Wait," he said, bringing one hand up to slowly touch one perfect strand of silver hair, smiling because it was easy to be silly and ask silly questions in the timeless morning, "so why did you wake up in the first place?" 

Sephiroth blinked long and slow at him and a smile came up to meet his own. "So I could look at you," he said. 

"Circular logic sucks," Zack mumbled from his side of the bed, his head surfacing from the sheets like a swimmer from the deep. He yawned deeply and gave Sephiroth's hip an appreciative tap. "Go back to sleep. 'S not time to get up yet."

Sephiroth's mouth slid warm to his shoulder and he curled into the hollow between both their bodies, exactly fitting. Three was the real number, firm and stable, three legs to balance on and hold steady from.

It was some unknown time in the morning and Zack would try to push it to the limit and Sephiroth would have to be manually prevented from getting up to do something that he deemed constructive but he thought he would think of ways to wake Zack up and keep Sephiroth there. Anyway, that would be for later; it didn't matter here and it was one of the best things of all, really, waking up and realizing it was all right to go back to sleep without fear of dreams or change. All right. Safe. 

He thought there were things he should know, things he should remember about and maybe even be afraid of, but they were only morning-thoughts and leftover fragments of dreams, impossible to take too hard. He thought he might have had a life before this but he didn't remember. It didn't matter. He was where he was supposed to be.

It was all right. He thought, from now on, he wouldn't have to wake up alone.

~owari~

***

End Notes: 

A long time ago, in an AIM conversation far, far away, I promised Dina some WAFF that involved Zack in some way for her birthday. I'm more than half a year late, but I like to think that maybe I finally came through, even if there's about eight pages of angst to slog through first.

Thanks for all the art and encouragement, Dina

I also could not have written this without the constant poking and ego-masturbation and comments of several people, most notably Catt, Twig, and Sofia. I owe y'all. Thank you.


End file.
